I.

THE chattering typewriters had ceased their gossiping, and the telegraph instruments down the corridor were snapping out in sharp metallic clicks the lag end of things coming in too late for the last edition. The electric fan in the corner sang like a droning bee. The hot, dead air from the street below entered at the open window, was caught in its brass blades, and skirled out into the corridor to fight with the heavy odor of printers’ ink. The clock hands were crawling toward five, and three men were watching them crawl. If ever five were reached without a summons from the city editor, Jackson, the tall man with the brierwood pipe, would go to the beach; Fay, the man with the corncob, would go home to his wife and three children ; Barton, the cub, would go, — well, he did n’t know where he would go.

Fay, who covered funerals and such things, whined a complaint about people dying in July.

“ It’s the most sensible thing a man can do,” opined Jackson.

“ And then,” continued Fay, unloosening his collar, “ to think of their having the nerve to go and get burned ! Bah ! I can stand a funeral in a house where the blinds are down and it’s cool, but services at a crematory, with the forced draft and ” —

“ Oh, cut it out! ” cried Barton.

“ I shall dream of that ” —

“ Barton ! Oh, Barton ! ” It was the office boy with a call from the city editor.

As Barton hurried out, Jackson removed the pipe from his mouth.

“ He’s about all in,” said he.

“ Good thing,” answered Fay. “If he can get scared out of this work, he is to be congratulated.”

“ It is n’t fear. I know what it is. I ’ve had it.”

“ Home and mother ? ”

“ Bah ! ” growled Jackson in disgust. “One could hold a more intelligent conversation with a rhinoceros on the uses of face powder.”

Both men smoked on in silence. Then Fay said irritably,—

“ Your simile is far-fetched, and you are n’t up against the proposition of how to support five on twenty per week. Damn such weather! The baby is sick.”

When Barton returned to tho room, Jackson glanced curiously at him.

“ What cher got, kid ? ”

There was a strained expression on Barton’s face as of one very ill. His lips were white and compressed, and beaded with moisture. He threw himself in a chair without answering, and folding his arms on the desk before him, buried his face, not weeping.

Fay went out.

“ What cher got, Billy ? ” asked Jackson again.

Barton slowly raised his head. He had delicate, sympathetic features, of the kind capable of hardening on occasion.

“ What have I got ? ” he repeated fiercely ; “ I’ve got another misery story. Weymouth has a tip that old Baxter, who lost all his money last year, is living out of town here in a garret with his daughter. It is one of his damn human interest stories. ‘ Go write up the contrast,’ said he, ‘ the poverty, the dying old man, faithful daughter brought up in society now doing housework. Whoop it up for a Sunday special! ’ Why can’t he let ’em alone ? ”

“ It’s a good story,” commented Jackson without removing his pipe.

For a second Billy stared straight ahead of him, and then suddenly leaning forward, he asked in a nervous, pleading voice, —

“ I say, Jackson, is n’t there anything decent in this world ? ”

“ Lots of things, if you are blind enough to see them.”

“ Then God help me ! ” burst out Barton, rising to his feet. “ I wish I were blind ! I can’t look a man in the face now without wondering when he is going crooked ; I can’t look at the outside of a respectable house, without wondering when a skeleton is going to stalk forth ; I — I can’t look a woman in the face without — Oh, I’m sick of it, — sick of it, do you hear ? I want to get back to the green fields, and the mountains, and the fresh air! I am sick of all this ! ”

He stood there with his nostrils quivering as though he had been running. Jackson arose, and going to his side, laid a hand upon his arm.

“ See here, boy, I don’t want the responsibility of inducing you to remain in this business. I believe as the Frenchman said, ‘It’s a good business if you get out of it soon enough.’ Only there are some of us who don’t get out ; could n’t get out if we wanted to. And we don’t want to. That’s the trouble, we don’t want to. But don’t run and don’t get out too soon. That’s worse. It’s — it’s like going behind the scenes and seeing the tinsel, and the paint, and the wheels, without waiting long enough to learn what it all means. Now listen, Billy ; I don’t set myself up as a philosopher, but I have learned this, — there is just one decent thing in all this world, but that one thing makes all things else decent. Find it before you quit. Find it for yourself.”

He looked at Barton a moment as though about to say more, but changed his mind and started from the room. He knew the lad would be ashamed of himself for his temporary weakness, and likely enough would hate him for his advice. But he turned back once.

“ Say, why don’t you come down to the beach and have a swim before you start? You are looking kind of white.”

“ No,” answered Billy, with sudden stubbornness, “ I’m going. I’m going now.”

So he took the 5.30 train for Wessex. The stuffy, suffocating cars were drawn over hot rails by a panting engine, leaving in their wake a cloud of dry, yellow dust. Men spoke seldom, and then mechanically, in emotionless monosyllables. A querulous babe cried in spasms. The sun sank red behind the parched fields, and left an atmosphere as parched as the grass itself. The brown landscape flowed past the car windows, a dark stream, like a sluggish tropical river. The monotony of it all was only varied by the sight of factories and huts, and yards full of broken and unclean things.

He leaned far back in the seat, and closed his eyes. His mind became occupied with trying to find breath in the gasladen atmosphere, and in thinking an exasperating air which he soon felt that he must hum in time with the clicking of the car wheels over the rails. It was an unpleasant task, but if he neglected it, the cars would go off the rail or something, and then there would be an odd, jumbled-up mass of twisted iron and splinters, with arms and legs sticking out. And he would have to go round and ask their names for his paper. Yes, he would have to shout into that pile of burning ties, —

“ I say, you with the arm sticking out, I’m from the Times, what’s your name?”

If the man died, gasping it, would that be a scoop ?

He laughed mirthlessly as he straightened himself and gazed out the window again.

The lamps in the car had been lighted before the smutty - faced brakeman growled, “ Wessex.”

He found himself on the station platform. A small boy was watching the disappearing train, and wriggling his toes in an uncomfortable fashion. A baggageman in blue overalls was making much ado over the single parcel left on the hot planks. Beyond the station, Billy saw a few houses, lights in the windows; beyond that, darkness. He stood there stupidly, looking at the lights.

“ Waitin’ fer some one?” queried the baggageman.

“ Yes,” answered Billy mechanically.

“ Hot, ain’t it ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Should n’t wonder if we had a shower.”

“ Yes.”

He wondered vaguely how much this fellow stole in the course of a year. He was of half a mind to ask him. It would make a good story, — trusted railroad employee, country station —

“ — and so I reckon I’d better g’orn home and tell my wife and be done with it.”

What had the man been talking about ?

“ I tell yer, young feller, don’t you never git married. That’s when yer troubles begin! ”

Billy turned upon him fiercely, with sudden madness: —

“ You lie ! It’s good for a man, I tell you. It’s ” —

The baggageman was staring in openmouthed astonishment. Billy regained his senses.

“ I beg your pardon. I — I— Where does old man Baxter live ? ”

“ Old man Baxter?” asked the baggageman suspiciously.

“ Poor old man Baxter.”

“ Dunno ’s he’s so poor. He lives on the old Baxter place down the road. Keep up over the hill and g’orn till you come to a little house with a flower garden before it.”

The man sidled away, and from a safe distance watched Billy as he stumbled off down the road.

It was a pleasant road, a peaceful, quiet sort of road, with large maple trees either side of it and fields beyond, but it was full of a white hot dust that choked and burned. He hurried along unmindful of the cooling breeze trying to stir the large green leaves, unmindful that the air was freshening, unmindful of the night song of the birds. He continued to the turn, and kept on over the hill. By that sheer force of will power which a runner exercises on the last mile of a long race, he forced his legs down the hill to the house with the flower garden before it.

There was a light in the window.

He stumbled and fell.

II.

When Billy opened his eyes, he knew that two persons were bending over him, though in the dark he could not distinguish their faces.

“ He ’s fainted, dad,” said one in a voice soft, low, half full of fright. It was as though a shadow should speak.

With an effort Billy rose on his elbow.

“ I — I beg pardon,” he said.

A man’s hand was laid upon his shoulder.

“ What’s the trouble, lad ? ”

It was the voice of an old man.

“ Trouble ? I — I don’t know. I fell.”

“ I guess it’s the heat. Can you walk a little ? Ruth, take his other arm.”

Between the two, still unconscious of where he was, he reached the cottage with the flower garden before it. They led him into the living-room, where a single candle was burning, and bade him sit while they hurried about for water and ice. Then he knew where he was, — knew with a rush of ugly thoughts that nearly drove him again into unconsciousness. This was old man Baxter’s home.

He closed his eyes. He had no right there, no right to see. He would n’t see ! He would take their cooling draught, and then go out, his eyes still closed so that he should not be even tempted to describe what was within.

But he heard a voice near him, —

“ Won’t you drink this ? ”

And upon opening his eyes he saw beside him a young woman clothed in dainty white muslin, holding out to him a glass in which the ice tinkled. He drank, his eyes still upon her.

“ You look very tired and — and hungry,” she said. “ Are you hungry ? ”

“ No,” he answered.

He should have been hungry, for he had not eaten since breakfast, but all he knew now was that the mere sight of this girl, so fresh, so pure, so cool, was as balm to his eyes, and through his eyes reached and cooled his feverish brain.

Then dad came in with an ice bag for his head, and made him lie back in the chair a few moments while this took the heat from out the space over his brow. He studied him in the feeble candlelight, — an old man with hair snow-white and a clean shaven face furrowed with deep lines just above the aquiline nose and about the thin mouth, his eyes half hidden beneath shaggy brows. And beside him was his daughter, one arm thrown over his shoulder. Her face was his face without the lines, and throughout of a finer mould, differing only in that her eyes were gray and his were blue. And both were happy. He thanked God for that, — they both looked happy. He felt, as much as saw, that the room in which they sat was comfortably furnished; and in the dark, in one corner, he discovered the outlines of a piano. He thanked God for that, too.

The ice made him very comfortable and half drowsy. He would have liked to remain there so, indefinitely, just watching these two. There seemed to be no reason why he should n’t until — he suddenly remembered who he was. He had no right there ! He was a newspaper man ! He had come to hurt them, — to lay bare to the world, in the brutal fashion of a Sunday paper, the sweet privacy of their life! He was to bring the world into this house, —the coarse, vulgar, curious world they had fled to escape ! He felt as foul as he who spied upon Godiva!

Staggering to his feet, he started across the room.

“ I must go,” he said huskily. “ I must go.”

“ No, no!” exclaimed the girl, “you must n’t go yet. There is no carriage, and you cannot walk.”

“ Ruth is right,” added the old gentleman. “You will faint before you reach the road. If you have important business ” —

“ No, I have n’t any business, only” —

Why, that was it: he had n’t any business. How simple it was! He returned to his chair with a heavy weight lifted from his shoulders. His thought up to now had been that he must obey orders, for that had been drilled into him as it is into a soldier. Well, and if he would not, what then ? His brain started to reason about the matter, but he would not listen. He refused absolutely to listen, even at the beginning. He was sole master of himself, and that was the end of it.

“ You are very good to me,” he said; “ I feel much better.”

“ You have walked far to-day ? ” asked the old gentleman, not to question, but out of sympathy.

“ No, not far,” answered Billy. “ Only it has been a rough road and a hot, dusty road.”

He glanced first at the girl and then at the father, with a curious look of doubt, pleading, and frankness.

“ Do you mind if — if I forget a little ? ”

The father drew his daughter closer.

“ No,” he said, “ forget. This is the house of Oblivion.”

She kissed her father’s hair and smiled her assent, too.

“ I have a sister who looks like you,” went on Billy. “ My name is Barton. I come from Maine. She is down there now among the trees, — the big trees.”

The old gentleman bowed slightly.

“ My name is Baxter. This is my daughter.”

Billy rose, but she motioned him to be seated again. He leaned far back in the big chair. Though still feeling weak, all the pain had vanished, all the fever. He felt as one tired and dusty does after a bath in a clear cold spring. Glancing about him once again, he noticed how each article in the room breathed that wonderful word, “ Home.”

“ Oh, but this is good! ” he exclaimed. “ You don’t know how good this is ! ”

The old man’s eyes and the young man’s eyes met and they understood each other.

“ You have learned early,” said the elder. “ It took me fifty years to learn what is good.”

The girl was watching them both curiously, not understanding.

“ You men ! ” she said, with a little laugh ; “ I envy you your power of learning. You learn — everything, and we women, we go on learning only by accident.”

“ But half of what we learn,” said her father, “ is learning all over again. We forget so much ! ”

“ And we remember so much! ” said she.

“ And happiness is only learning what to remember and what to forget,” said Billy.

“ And we all get so mixed up and Maeterlincky when we try to be wise,” she laughed.

And then they all laughed together, with the perfect sympathy of three notes going to make up a chord.

Billy settled himself more comfortably. But this was good ! There was such a dead certainty about happiness like theirs, and it was big and wholesome and beautiful, like a spring morning.

They chatted away for an hour, the girl always laughing when the conversation threatened to become serious, and dad and Billy always stopping to listen, and then to laugh themselves. And finally dad asked her to play, and without excuse she melted into the shadow of the piano and struck a chord.

“ But do you not play, Mr. Barton ? ” she asked, turning a moment.

“ I used to play a little, — the violin, — but” —

The old gentleman straightened himself.

“ Won’t you try ? I myself used to play, but now ” —

He held out his palsied, trembling arm.

When he brought the instrument to the young man, he passed his hand over it as a father often does over his child’s head when introducing him to a stranger.

“ I think you will like it,” he said simply.

And as Billy tuned it, he felt his nerves thrill at the softness of it,—the sympathy of it.

They sat there in the light of the single candle, she at the piano in the shadows, Billy in his chair, with the instrument tucked beneath his chin, and his eyes closed, the old gentleman with his hand over his brow, as though in prayer. He spoke only to ask them to play some favorite air of his. Billy seemed to remember everything that evening, and she at the piano followed him almost intuitively with rich soft chords and little laughing hurries of her own, up and down the keys. And as they listened, each followed a different path with his thoughts, — the old man, the young man, and the girl. But that which they dreamed that hour was sacred to them ever after.

The last air died away. There was a long silence in which the essence of all those songs still lingered like the perfume of flowers just removed. The old gentleman could be heard breathing deeply, regularly. Then Billy was conscious of a whisper.

“ He has not slept so for long, — oh, very long! ” she said.

“ Do not wake him,” he whispered in reply; “ I will go. I am very strong now.”

He tiptoed across the floor, she following.

“ I am sure,” she said, “he would wish you to remain. May I call him ? ”

It was odd, the way she asked if she might. He liked it.

“ No,” he answered ; “ such sleep should not be broken. You will thank him for me ? ”

He found his cap and she went with him to the end of the path. He hesitated because he did not like to say good-by. Only her little form was visible in the dark, with just a white suggestion of the face.

“ It is very wonderful how you two have come into my life,” he said. There was a touch of finality in his tone which she was quick to catch.

“ But you speak as though you were not to return,” she said.

He seemed to ponder a moment.

“ I thought so at first because — Why, perhaps I am to return! ”

“ Yes, I think you are to return,” she said. “And — and dad asks you to tea to-morrow.”

She had gone.

When Billy Barton stamped up the office stairs the next morning, he was whistling a brisk march. There was a swing to his shoulders, a careless poise to his head, and a brusqueness of manner which had not been his for many months.

The city editor glanced up as he entered the office.

“ Well! ” he growled.

“Nothin’ doin’,” said Billy cheerfully.

“ What! ”

“ No story down there.”

A moment the editor stared at him. Then he said very slowly, —

“ Young man, I feel way down deep in my heart that your talents are being wasted here. I wish you Godspeed.”

“ S’long,” said Billy.

Down the corridor he saw Jackson, and made a dive for him.

“ I’ve found it, Jackson ! Oh, I’ve found it! ” he shouted.

Then a broad grin slowly spread over his features, and he gave Jackson’s hand a grip that made the latter wince.

“ And say,” he announced, “ I’m fired ! ”

“ So ! ” said Jackson. “ What you going to do ? ”

“ Do ? ” queried Billy as though surprised at the question ; “do? Why, I’m going to Wessex for tea! ”

Frederick Orin Bartlett.